Binge watching and streaming services has all but killed the long, episodic American television series. Darling series like Squid Game, a 9 episode kill-fest, keeps Netflix rolling with content. LOST also had its Battle Royale elements with the Others and the Smoke Monster, but not in a concentrated form like SG.
Nonetheless, SG won international fans for the Korean horror-action-game series. One major point was that in the end - - - there was an end! A winner! A clear conclusion!
In the early century, LOST and the Sopranos did something highly unusual: infuriate long time fans with strange endings. LOST's last season sideways arc will always be debated as a bad re-set by writers who wrote themselves into a corner with no way out. LOST never got the clear ending that now another show.
The Sopranos ended with a jarring, sudden cut to black screen.
The crime family was having dinner in a small restaurant when the door opens. Boom - - no noise, no clue, just a black screen. The End. Fans debated for years what it meant. Did Tony did whacked? Did the family break up? Did nothing happen? Did the creators not know how to end the show?
Show runner David Chase recently spoke to Hollywood Reporter about the show and its ending. Chase said that 2 years before the ending, he was driving from NYC to New Jersey as Tony Soprano often did in the series. He saw a small road side diner. In his head, he thought that would make a good location for Tony's final demise. Yes, Chase always thought that Tony was going to die in the finale. It was just when and where.
The article stated:
"Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed. Yeah. But I think I had this notion—I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, “Tony should get it in a place like that.” Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before."
Chase said, "I had no idea it would cause that much—I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed! Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos. It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me."
